Drive-through vehicle washes of conventional design move a vehicle to be washed across a floor surface by utilizing a recessed conveyor that engages one of the vehicle wheels. As the vehicle advances through the wash, it passes by a number of stations in which it is washed, rinsed and dried. A different washing apparatus is provided at each station, each apparatus being specifically adapted to clean specific parts of the vehicle.
The front and rear surfaces of the vehicle, particularly the bumpers, have traditionally been difficult to clean due to the level of dirt accumulation, the shape of the bumper and the location of the bumper relative to the region in which the bumper washing apparatus needs to be mounted. Due to these problems, rear and front bumpers are frequently washed manually by attendants using a high pressure stream of heated soapy water applied using a wand. To minimize the labor and improve the quality of the vehicle wash, prior art devices have imbedded in the wash station floor manifolds that spray high pressure streams of hot water on the vehicle front and rear bumpers. To achieve an effective wash, it is desirable to orient the manifold as close to the vehicle surface to be washed as possible and have the stream strike the vehicle as directly as possible. In a quest for optimum performance, it has been determined that two manifolds mounted to a floor such that they oscillate to direct high pressure jets of liquid from a plurality of outlets in each toward the front and rear surfaces of vehicles moved over them best cleans these surfaces.
The problem with using infloor jet washers of the prior art design is that it is necessary to form large elongated pits in the floor specifically for the wash apparatus. In order to achieve maximum hydraulic pump utilization, it is necessary to have two separate pits that are spaced apart, one for the front vehicle wash and one for the rear vehicle wash. Not only is excavating pits of this nature expensive, particularly in retrofit applications, but it becomes very difficult to relocate the infloor bumper jet washers when it is time to renovate or replace the washer system equipment.